Austenitic stainless steel is a common material for various applications since these types of steels exhibit good corrosion resistance, good mechanical properties as well as good workability. Standard austenitic stainless steels comprise at least 17 percent chromium, 8 percent nickel and the rest iron. Other alloying elements are also often included.
The fast growing need for stainless steels around the world and the following high demand of alloying metals in the steel production has lead to increases in metal prices. Especially nickel has become expensive. Various attempts have therefore been made to substitute nickel in austenitic stainless steels with other alloying elements, for example as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,286,310 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 6,274,084 and JP3002357.
The steels described above exhibit good hot workability and high deformation hardening. These are properties which are important for the manufacturing of articles of large dimensions, such as heavy sheets. However, the steels described above have proven unsuitable for certain articles which require cold working including large reduction ratios.
WO0026428 describes a low nickel steel alloy in which the amount of alloy elements have been combined to achieve a formable steel which exhibit good resistance to corrosion and work hardening. Further, the steel contains expensive alloy elements. Another steel alloy is described in JP2008038191. In this steel alloy, the elements have been balanced for improving the surface conditions of the steel. However, the properties of the above mentioned steel alloys make them unsuitable for processes involving cold working including large reduction ratios.